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Some might argue that history constrains us. Certainly many teenagers keenly feel the question, “Why does it have to be this way? Why must the world work as it does?” The dynamism of youth and their imaginations certainly can do wonders for any society.

We may suppose that a world without historical awareness will create a glorious whole new world of possibilities. But . . . history rather pedantically suggests that the opposite of the case. Recall the French Revolution, for example. They remade everything, even their sense of time. But this confusion and disruption led to terrible tyranny and mass incarceration. The communist regimes of the 20th century show this same tendency. Only the most bold would call Soviet-era culture stimulating and full of possibilities. Their narrowness of vision–a narrowness made possible and even likely by their disrespect to history–created a terrible tyranny.

Many comedians have commented that they no longer wish to perform at many college campuses. Students in today’s climate seemingly cannot operate with dual levels of reality. They cannot make distinctions between jokes and real life, assuming a 1-1 correlation of all aspects of reality, a flat world. Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic wrote that,

Two of the most respected American comedians, Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, have discussed the unique problems that comics face on college campuses. In November, Rock told Frank Rich in an interview for New York magazine that he no longer plays colleges, because they’re “too conservative.” He didn’t necessarily mean that the students were Republican; he meant that they were far too eager “not to offend anybody.” In college gigs, he said, “you can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.” Then, in June, Seinfeld reopened the debate—and set off a frenzied round of op-eds—when he said in a radio interview that comics warn him not to “go near colleges—they’re so PC.”

When I attended the convention [The National Association for Campus Activities] in Minneapolis in February, I saw ample evidence of the repressive atmosphere that Rock and Seinfeld described, as well as another, not unrelated factor: the infantilization of the American undergraduate, and this character’s evolving status in the world of higher learning—less a student than a consumer, someone whose whims and affectations (political, sexual, pseudo-intellectual) must be constantly supported and championed. To understand this change, it helps to think of college not as an institution of scholarly pursuit but as the all-inclusive resort that it has in recent years become—and then to think of the undergraduate who drops out or transfers as an early checkout. Keeping hold of that kid for all four years has become a central obsession of the higher-ed-industrial complex. How do you do it? In part, by importing enough jesters and bards to keep him from wandering away to someplace more entertaining, taking his Pell grant and his 529 plan and his student loans with him.

But which jesters, which bards? Ones who can handle the challenge. Because when you put all of these forces together—political correctness, coddling, and the need to keep kids at once amused and unoffended (not to mention the absence of a two-drink minimum and its crowd-lubricating effect)—the black-box theater of an obscure liberal-arts college deep in flyover territory may just be the toughest comedy room in the country.

In the same vein, Alex Tabborok recently commented that,

It has been said that we live in an increasingly divided media universe but on many issues I think we live in an increasingly uniform media universe. Social media is so ubiquitous and the same things sell so widely that I suspect the collective consciousness is less fragmentary than in the past.

I thought of this issue reading transcipt trials of two Soviet authors in the late 1960’s, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky. The authors were not in trouble for any direct attacks against the state or against communist doctrine per se. Obviously no writer who valued his safety would write in this way. The problems with their work lay elsewhere. Among the issues raised:

There are no clear good and bad characters in your stories. How then can the people understand the story (i.e., the story alienates the masses, which is de-facto anti-communist)?

Which characters in the story definitively represent the author’s point of view? In other words, which character speaks for the author, and which characters serve as foils?

This particular attack assumes that 1) The relationship between characters in the story and the author is always strictly linear and 1-1, and 2) This relationship is necessary for clarity in the story, and 3) Without this clarity, how can we judge if you are a threat to the state or not?

Both authors seemed terribly confused by attacks made against them, pleading “not guilty,” an unusual move in trials of this sort. They tried to explain basic literary theory of story and character, but to no avail. Their judges simply couldn’t accept this mental construct. By definition character’s must express a direct relationship to the author. Character’s who criticize the state must reflect the author’s mind. The author’s tried to point out that some of these characters fare badly in the story, but the prosecutors shot back that not all who criticized the state “got their just desserts.” Here is a brief excerpt from Yuli Daniel’s trial, which begins with the prosecutor reading an excerpt from one of Daniel’s stories:

Prosecutor (reading): “I hate them [referring to those in power] so much I have spasms, I scream, I tremble.” Well, Daniel, what are we to make of this?

Daniel: That is an epigraph to the character’s thoughts (laughter in the courtroom, Daniel looks around nervously).

Prosecutor: Who is that you hate so? Who do you want to destroy?

Daniel: To whom are you talking? To me, or to my character, or to someone else?

Prosecutor: Who is your positive hero? Who expresses your point of view in the story?

Daniel: I have told you, the story has no entirely positive hero and there doesn’t have to be one.

Prosecutor: Who expresses the author’s credo?

Daniel: The characters do express the author’s thoughts, but only in part. No single character represents the author. Maybe [my story is] bad literature, but it is literature, and it doesn’t divide everything into black and white. . . . The indictment states that I express my ideas “through the mouths of my characters.” That is a naive accusation, to put it mildly.

Neither author had success discussing the nuance of how stories work. Both received labor camp sentences of 5-7 years.

In his Conversations with Stalin Milovan Djilas tells of his initial fascination with Stalin and the Soviet Union and his subsequent disenchantment in a few short years. Many other works give many more details about the horror and oppression in Stalinist Russia. What made Djilas’ account interesting was that he framed his account not so much in terms of how it all went wrong, but how it managed to work at all. That is, we know Stalin was bad, but if he was so bad, why did Soviet Russia prosper and gain power, at least in certain ways?

He explores this in different ways. For example, no one questions that the purges in the military during the 1930’s sacrificed thousands to Stalin’s paranoia, but Djilas had met many of the commanders put in place after the purges, and admitted that they were almost all quite adept, fearless, and devoted. Naturally, Stalin had his entourage that rarely, if ever, challenged him. As you would expect, one always had to constantly avoid saying the wrong thing by following keenly the bouncing ball of “official” opinion. But unlike most other autocrats throughout history, Stalin did actual work and remained very well informed. He could incisively size up personalities in the room and control it with ease.

What struck me most of all, however, was this comment of Djilas:

“The world in which the Soviet leaders lived–and that was my world too–was slowly taking on a new appearance: horrible, unceasing struggle on all sides. Everything was stripped bare and reduced to strife which only changed in form and in which only the stronger and more adroit survived. Full of admiration for Soviet leaders before this, I now succumbed to a heady enthusiasm for the inexhaustible will and awareness that never left them for a moment. That was a world in which there was no other choice other than victory or death.”

Perhaps unconsciously, Djilas reveals that Maxism has its roots not in economics, politics, or a new conception of proletarian culture, but in a new religious understanding of the world–a naked struggle for will and power. It is this elemental understanding of things that can give regimes who build on this faith a concentrated vitality, akin to the power of art in certain barbarian civilizations.* Perhaps Stalin understood this as well, to great and terrible effect.

Today most of us immediately understand the danger’s of the far-right, perhaps because the far-right has a crystal-clear idea of what they want and express it forcefully. Many on the far-left, on the other hand–quite prevalent on many campuses today–seem to think that their ideas will lead to a bright, sunlit land where everyone loves everyone else (the far-right has no such plan and no such delusion). But if you can’t take a joke, you will dramatically narrow your world, after which, you will have nothing to fall-back on other than the paganism of power and will.

Dave

*Though I would love to claim this insight about “barbarian art,” it belongs entirely to the inimitable Kenneth Clark. He argued that the concentrated narrowness of barbarian civilizations can give their art a certain vitality.

I have never quite agreed with Tolstoy’s famous quote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The quote seems to indicate to me that goodness is static, while evil has “interesting” variety. I see it the other way round. The great saints of the Church demonstrate great variety, whereas all the bad guys of history have little to differentiate them. What, after all, makes Pol Pot that much different from Mao, or Nero from Cambyses, or Hitler from Stalin? On the contrary, St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas, to take two contemporary medieval examples, could not be more different.

Of course I could also be misinterpreting the quote badly.

Reading Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization I thought of Tolstoy’s quote again and rethought it a bit.

Kotkin’s goal for the book intrigued me. Ok, he states, of course Stalin was a bad guy and Stalinism proved enormously destructive in many ways. But no regime can last for as long as Stalin’s did without him doing something right, or at least, appealing to large numbers of the population with his ideas and “results.” In other words, not everyone got oppressed, and some must have benefitted from what Stalin did. More than that, enough must have truly believed in what Stalin sought to accomplish not to just obey his directives, but to revere him as well. Kotkin seeks to uncover exactly how Stalinism “worked” in every day life and get us beyond our cardboard cutout of Stalin as “bad dictator” without leaving it entirely. Looking at the city of Magnitogorsk gives him ample opportunity to do so, for it was a city built from nothing almost overnight according to at least what Soviets planned as purely “socialist” or “Stalinist” designs.

Is it possible that, “All evil dictators are alike, but each of them does their “good” things in different ways?

The book begins by discussing briefly the context of the rise of the “Stalinist city.” Part of the appeal of communism in the 1920’s lie in the seeming collapse of the west. In retrospect World War I seems to be the death knell of Europe, and many at the time felt the same. Capitalism had, obviously, exhausted itself and brought about the grisly destruction of the war. What else could one expect on a system rooted fundamentally in economic and class exploitation. Socialism was so obviously the way of the future, only a stubborn fool would cling to it still.

Or so the argument went.

Given that for many ca. 1925 socialism represented the way of the future, socialism needed to be on the cutting edge of technology. Socialism had rational roots, and this rationalism would inevitably flee tradition and embrace the hopeful future.

To that end, the Soviets faced a few problems.

The first is that Russia was far, far behind the west in terms of technology and industrialization. They needed to catch up in a big hurry, and not just for reasons of security, but also for ideology. Socialism must show itself superior to capitalism in all respects if their revolution would spread.

The second is that Russia never quite experienced the Enlightenment and may have been the most traditional of European societies. These traditions had their roots in the daily rhythms of peasant village life and in the multitude of small villages scattered throughout the country — the kind of places adored by Tolstoy. These villagers invariably looked down on “cities” as enemies to their way of life and their faith, often with good reason.

To build the new humanity sought by socialists nearly everything had to change within the Soviet Union.

The “Magnetic Mountain” served as a perfect template for all of Stalin’s most important plans. Everyone knew that the mountains nearby contained enormous quantities of iron ore deposits, some of the largest in the known world. And because the area stood as merely a barren wasteland in the steppes, they could build on a blank slate. The new steel plant would be the largest in the world, and the people who came to work could be drafted from the villages, forging a new kind of humanity in the process (the use of the term “forging” was deliberate, tying the plant and economic changes to the social and political changes they sought).

Kotkin uncovers some fascinating, but perhaps obvious details about the design of the city. Not just the village, but the family itself presented a barrier to socialist reform. The original design of the living spaces were apartments. Apartments had the advantage of economic efficiency. They also helped “forge the new humanity, breaking down the village and then family unit in one go. The first apartments had no kitchens or common space within individual quarters. They located the kitchen’s and common areas in more central locations — no one should be excluded, and no one could exclude themselves (later buildings allowed for more family space). The design of the buildings discouraged families from creating distinct identities for themselves apart from the people as a whole.

Equality formed the bedrock value, so each apartment should have equal access to the sun. Unfortunately, this meant that, with no courtyard, each apartment had equal exposure to the brutally cold winds that roared across the steppe 6-7 months a year. Finally, as socialists defined value through labor, all apartments got built on a line equidistant from the plant itself. The prominence of the massive plant in the geography and psychology of the city made it not unlike the role of churches in medieval towns. Mankind will be defined by what he worships, whether that be God or labor.

One of the most dreary aspects of this period was the politicization of all aspects of life. The Soviets faced the embarrassment of needing capitalist firms to design most of the major parts of the plant. But . . . socialists could show their superiority by getting more out of the machines than believed by the capitalists. So if part ‘x’ was predicted to operate at ‘y’ speed and efficiency, we could do better. We will operate at ‘y + ?’ efficiency, thereby showing the superiority of socialist labor. Of course, this resulted in a host of mechanical problems.

This forced them into an uncomfortable choice. Either socialist labor was not superior, or . . . “wreckers” existed within the plant — counter-revolutionaries and capitalists. So, now those that worked the machines too hard might be subject to “unmasking” by true patriots and devotees of the revolution. Of course, if workers were to be true participants in the revolution they had to have the power to “unmask” — and be expected to.

As you might expect, many got unmasked. Limiting production turned into treason, for it was “counter-revolutionary.” Under the principle of equality, many party members got unmasked as well (though many got reinstated on the back end — the party had to cover for itself).

But Kotkin shows that despite the madness of the method, it won many converts. The Soviet Union did get transformed into an industrial colossus, and had enough social unity to withstand the withering Nazi onslought in W.W. II. By most any rational calculus, Stalin and the Soviets should have closed up shop in 1941. How did they avoid this fate?

We have recourse to the standard answers, which include

The Russian Winter

The deep reservoirs of Russian nationalism the Nazi’s unleashed that mobilized an entire population

The brutal tactics of the S.S. turning local populations against the Nazi’s

The over-extension of the Nazi forces and the sound interior lines of Soviet defenses.

And again, the industrialization Stalin began allowed them to churn out tank after tank after tank.

All of these factors played a role.

However, we cannot overlook the fact that Stalin also had converts. His program worked in the sense that it gave people a a new purpose, a new sense of belonging, a new sense of destiny and their own place within History and the cosmos. Many remained ambivalent, some opposed him — mostly in secret. But many others no doubt believed.

This should give us pause. No man is an island. We would like to think that we would not fall prey to the design of the buildings, the alluring glow of the plant and the comradeship of the work. None of these, we think, would have any impact on us. We would not believe, we would not be changed.

Hopefully, we would be right. But one lesson of Stalin’s Magnetic Mountain is that people are inextricably influenced by their surroundings, sometimes even against their inclinations.

Sometimes how historical figures are perceived has much more to do with how perceptions change over time than what people actually did in their own lifetimes. Sometimes certain people in the past take on a romantic hue that also can distort our vision.

I thought about this phenomena while reading Five Letters of Cortes, a collection of letters Cortes sent back to the continent detailing events in Mexico. The book interested me because historians today routinely treat Cortes as a great villain, and I wanted to see how he measured up to that reputation in his own words. Scholars of course debate the veracity of some details Cortes narrates (without giving much credence to the idea that he simply told the truth as he saw it). But my interest was not what happened so much as how Cortes wanted his readers to perceive him, regardless of whether or not he spoke fairly and truly.

As I read I thought of how history views Alexander the Great. The two men have some similarities. Both sought glory, perhaps Alexander most of all. Both conquered and destroyed a foreign people and culture with at least questionable justification. Both dealt with internal disputes in their own ranks. Both used diplomacy to great effect, perhaps Cortes most of all. And yet, history loves Alexander and despises Cortes, generally speaking, and we should ask why.

A few things stood out to me in Cortes’ letters.

Cortes de-emphasizes violence and tries to play up his relationship with the natives when he can. He writes early in the first letter that, “the Indians went among us with as little fear as if they had already had dealings with us for many years.” He seems proudest when he makes friends. The “battles” (not battles in a traditional sense) and violence that occur happen when things break down, or in response to a tough situation initiated (in Cortes’ view) by the misunderstanding of the natives.

Cortes clearly admires the natives. A modern westerner expecting to find a racially motivated imperialist will be disappointed. He describes the sacrifices and violence surrounding Aztec religion in a lengthy passage:

And always on the day before some important enterprise they burn incense in their temples, and sometimes even sacrifice their own persons, some cutting out their tongues, others their ears, still others slicing their bodies with knives in order to offer to their idols the blood which flows from their wounds; sometimes sprinkling the whole of the temple with blood and throwing it up in the air, and many other fashions of sacrifice they use . . .

One very horrible and abominable custom they have which we have seen in no other part, and that is that whenever they wish to beg anything of their idols, in order that their petition may find more acceptance, they take large numbers of boys and girls and even of grown men and women and tear out their heart and bowels while still alive, burning them in the presence of those idols . . . Some of us have actually seen this done and they say it is the most terrible and frightful thing that they have ever seen. . . . Your majesties can therefore be certain that there can be no year in which they have not sacrificed some three to four thousand souls.

As to what the Spanish should do in light of this, I leave the reader to decide. Cortes continues,

Your majesties may therefore perceive whether it is their duty to prevent such loss and evil, and certainly it will be pleasing to God if by means of, and under the protection of your royal majesties, these people are introduced to and instructed in the Holy Catholic Faith . . .

And yet, after describing the most horrible aspect of Aztec society, Cortes concludes the section by writing,

For it is certain that if they should ever serve God with that same faith, fervor, and diligence [as their idols] they would work many miracles. We believe that by the aid of interpreters who should plainly declare to them the truths of the Holy Faith and the error in which they are, many, perhaps all of them, would quickly depart from their evil ways and come to true knowledge, for they live more equably and reasonably than any other of the tribes which we have hitherto come across.

Cortes also hates the fact that some of the Spanish use the Indians as currency in slaves. This, he argues, earns the “notorious” Diego Velazquez followers, and Cortes urges the king to remove him from any position of authority at once.

Spanish commentary on the Aztec king Montezuma strike a poignant note. Multiple sources all converge on the idea of admiration for the man. Here is Diaz de Casillo writing,

The Great Montezuma was about forty years old, of good height, well proportioned, spare and slight, and not very dark, though of the usual Indian complexion. He did not wear his hair long but just over his ears, and he had a short black beard, well-shaped and thin. His face was rather long and cheerful, he had fine eyes, and in his appearance and manner could express geniality or, when necessary, a serious composure. He was very neat and clean, and took a bath every afternoon. He had many women as his mistresses, the daughters of chieftains, but two legitimate wives who were Caciquesin their own right, and only some of his servants knew of it. He was quite free from sodomy. The clothes he wore one day he did not wear again till three or four days later. He had a guard of two hundred chieftains lodged in rooms beside his own, only some of whom were permitted to speak to him.”

When Moctezuma was allegedly killed by being stoned to death by his own people Cortés and all of us captains and soldiers wept for him, and there was no one among us that knew him and had dealings with him who did not mourn him as if he were our father, which was not surprising, since he was so good. It was stated that he had reigned for seventeen years, and was the best king they ever had in Mexico, and that he had personally triumphed in three wars against countries he had subjugated. I have spoken of the sorrow we all felt when we saw that Montezuma was dead. We even blamed the Mercederian friar for not having persuaded him to become a Christian.

Of course Cortes used violence at times directly and on purpose, however much he wanted to avoid it. In one such instance, we have both Aztec and Spanish sources for the same event. Regarding a terrible massacre, the Aztecs write,

Here it is told how the Spaniards killed, they murdered the Mexicans who were celebrating the Fiesta of Huitzilopochtli in the place they called The Patio of the Gods

At this time, when everyone was enjoying the celebration, when everyone was already dancing, when everyone was already singing, when song was linked to song and the songs roared like waves, in that precise moment the Spaniards determined to kill people. They came into the patio, armed for battle.

They came to close the exits, the steps, the entrances [to the patio]: The Gate of the Eagle in the smallest palace, The Gate of the Canestalk and the Gate of the Snake of Mirrors. And when they had closed them, no one could get out anywhere.

Once they had done this, they entered the Sacred Patio to kill people. They came on foot, carrying swords and wooden and metal shields. Immediately, they surrounded those who danced, then rushed to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off both his arms. Then they cut off his head [with such a force] that it flew off, falling far away.

At that moment, they then attacked all the people, stabbing them, spearing them, wounding them with their swords. They struck some from behind, who fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out [of their bodies]. They cut off the heads of some and smashed the heads of others into little pieces.

They struck others in the shoulders and tore their arms from their bodies. They struck some in the thighs and some in the calves. They slashed others in the abdomen and their entrails fell to the earth. There were some who even ran in vain, but their bowels spilled as they ran; they seemed to get their feet entangled with their own entrails. Eager to flee, they found nowhere to go.

Some tried to escape, but the Spaniards murdered them at the gates while they laughed. Others climbed the walls, but they could not save themselves. Others entered the communal house, where they were safe for a while. Others lay down among the victims and pretended to be dead. But if they stood up again they [the Spaniards] would see them and kill them.

The blood of the warriors ran like water as they ran, forming pools, which widened, as the smell of blood and entrails fouled the air.

And the Spaniards walked everywhere, searching the communal houses to kill those who were hiding. They ran everywhere, they searched every place.

Then a roar was heard, screams, people wailed, as they beat their palms against their lips. Quickly the captains assembled, as if planned in advance, and carried their spears and shields. Then the battle began. [The Mexicas] attacked them with arrows and even javelins, including small javelins used for hunting birds. They furiously hurled their javelins [at the Spaniards]. It was as if a layer of yellow canes spread over the Spaniards.

And the Spanish version of the same event:

Cortes wanted to entirely understand the cause of the Indians’ rebellion. He interrogated them [the Spaniards] altogether. Some said it was caused by the message sent by Narváez, others because the people wanted to toss the Spaniards out of Mexico [Tenochtitlan], which had been planned as soon as the ships had arrived, because while they were fighting they shouted “Get out!” at them. Others said it was to liberate Moctezuma, for they fought saying, “Free our god and King if you don’t want to die!” Still others said it was to steal the gold, silver, and jewels that the Spaniards had, because they heard the Indians say, “Here you shall leave the gold that you have taken!” Again, some said it was to keep the Tlaxcalans and other mortal enemies out of Mexico. Finally, many believed that taking their idols as gods, they had given themselves to the devil.

Any of these things would have been enough to cause the rebellion, not to mention all of them together. But the principal one was that a few days after Cortes left to confront Narváez, it became time for a festival the Mexicas wanted to celebrate in their traditional way. . . . They begged Pedro de Alvarado to give them his permission, so [the Spaniards] wouldn’t think that they planned to kill them. Alvarado consented provided that there were no sacrifices, no people killed, and no one had weapons.

More than 600 gentlemen and several lords gathered in the yard of the largest temple; some said there were more than a thousand there. They made a lot of noise with their drums, shells, bugles, and hendidos, which sounded like a loud whistle. Preparing their festival, they were naked, but covered with precious stones, pearls, necklaces, belts, bracelets, many jewels of gold, silver, and mother-of-pearl, wearing very rich feathers on their heads. They performed a dance called the mazeualiztli, which is called that because it is a holiday from work [symbolized by the word for farmer, macehaulli]. . . . They laid mats in the patio of the temple and played drums on them. They danced in circles, holding hands, to the music of the singers, to which they responded.

The songs were sacred, and not profane, and were sung to praise the god honored in the festival, to induce him to provide water and grain, health, and victory, or to thank him for healthy children and other things. And those who knew the language and these ceremonial rites said that when the people danced in the temples, they perform very different from those who danced the netoteliztli, in voice, movement of the body, head, arms, and feet, by which they manifested their concepts of good and evil. The Spaniards called this dance, an areito, a word they brought from the islands of Cuba and Santo Domingo. While the Mexica gentlemen were dancing in the temple yard of Vitcilopuchtli [Huitzilopochtli], Pedro de Alvarado went there. Whether on [the basis of] his own opinion or in an agreement decided by everyone, I don’t know, but some say he had been warned that the Indian nobles of the city had assembled to plot the mutiny and the rebellion, which they later carried out; others, believe that [the Spaniards] went to watch them perform this famous and praised dance, and seeing how rich they were and wanting the gold the Indians were wearing, he [Alvarado] covered each of the entrances with ten or twelve Spaniards and went inside with more than fifty [Spaniards], and without remorse and lacking any Christian piety, they brutally stabbed and killed the Indians, and took what they were wearing.

I have no wish to downplay a terrible massacre. For our purposes, however, a few things surprised me about the Spanish account.

We might expect ‘righteous’ conquistadors rejoicing in their deed. Some accounts of the Crusaders massacring civilians in Jerusalem in 1099 sound this way. Instead we them troubled and very much aware of the fact that they departed from their faith with their actions.

Confusion, not certainty, dominates the text. They search for answers and have a hard time understanding what it is they face or why it happened in the first place. Some historians/sources apparently indicate that the Spanish may have believed that they were about to do another human sacrifice, though the account above does not hint at this or use it as an excuse.

One can disagree with the reasons for the Spanish presence in the new world. One can lament the results of the Spanish conquest and the subsequent treatment of the natives. But I found my overall opinion about Cortes changed from reading his writings, though I still lack a great deal of familiarity with the events in general and other particular sources to come to definite conclusions.

But other historians presumably do not. And this brings us back to my question earlier about comparing Alexander and Cortes. Some historians fall over themselves fawning about Alexander, and no one treats Cortes this way, despite their similarities.

Alexander had a few points in his favor . . .

The fact that he was king and thus the focal point of all narratives about him. Cortes reported to the emperor, there were other conquistadors, Montezuma is a striking figure, etc.

Alexander destroyed the Persians in classic and dramatic pitched battles, the events of which featured himself. The Aztecs died partly as a result of cunning diplomacy, Montezuma’s attitude, some skirmishes, etc. Lacking a Battle of Issus or Gaugemela, we have a hard time latching onto Cortes to fully appreciate his skills (you don’t have to approve of Cortes to admire certain aspects of him).

Alexander operated within a “heroic” culture where for the most part, great deeds needed no particular justification. Even modern treatments of Alexander pick up on this, consciously or no. I can’t recall any in depth discussion from ancient writers, for example, about Alexander’s motives, or the justice of his cause. They simply don’t matter. Cortes operated within a much different (and certainly superior) moral framework that calls much of the Spanish enterprise into question.

Of course we cannot discount the fact that, however well intentioned Cortes may have been, those that followed often exploited the natives for wealth and personal gain. We should not directly blame Cortes for this, but his association with it taints him inevitably, and perhaps with some justice.

Of course unlike Alexander, Cortes never killed those close to him out of paranoia or political expediency (i.e. as Alexander did with Parmenio and Callisthenes), nor did he murder his friends in fits of drunken rage (Cleitus). But these acts usually get overlooked amidst the grandeur of Gaugemela.

Whatever we may think of Cortes, sifting through accumulated historiography about him is a tricky business, especially in light of his own words.

This week we examined the brief and turbulent life of Alexander the Great, a man who has enthralled people for centuries. No one conquered more people quicker than he. Of course, his early death immortalized him and helps us tend to see his successes.

I offered the students four different ways of thinking about Alexander, adopted by different historians in different times and places.

Historian J.F.C. Fuller sees in Alexander one the great men of the ancient world. In him we see statesman, philosopher, and man of action all rolled into one. He at times sunk to the morals of his time, but often rose above them.

Some see Alexander as the embodiment of a romantic ideal, a young boy out to change the world, an idealist visionary. A variation of this view would be one that does not see Alexander in primarily moral terms, but views him as a “force of nature.” We do not call a tornado good or bad, but we cannot help but stand and stare, perhaps even in spite of ourselves.

Some see him as a great military leader, but a failed statesman. Great generals win battles, but great statesman get men to transform their view of the world. Regardless of how we view Alexander’s desire to unite East and West, he failed to sell this to his men and his dream collapsed.

Still others, like Victor Davis Hanson, see in Alexander a common thug, a man who lived to kill. He massacred Thebans and most in Tyre after their defeats. Like Stalin, most of those close to him ended up dead. He demanded practices like prostration, and may have believed what his mother told him, that he was the Son of Zeus. Hanson sees admiration for Alexander as dangerous, a symptom of boredom and our will to escape this boredom through death.

This image of Alexander, though made long after his death, captures something of his madness, focus, brilliance, and lust for conquest:

The battle that defined Alexander’s life and career was Guagemela in 331 B.C.

He had already beaten the Persians decisively twice, but this time Darius III, king of Persia, seemed to have learned his lesson. He choose a wide open plain for battle, which could maximize his numeric advantage which was probably at least 5-1. He brought with him chariots, one of the fearsome weapons of the ancient world. He gave more heavy weaponry to his infantry.

Many of Alexander’s advisors urged him to wait, to go around, or perhaps fight Darius at night. Alexander would have none of it. He would not, he argued, “steal his victory.”

How did an army of around 45,000 defeat an army at least 5x its size?

Part of understanding Alexander’s victory is to see that many problems that most generals traditionally worried about Alexander felt he could ignore. For example, most generals would take troops to protect supplies, but Alexander didn’t mind if the Persians raided his supplies. If he won the battle, he could march straight to Babylon and have all the supplies he needed.

Alexander also believed that he make up for his lack of numbers by speed. In fact, he probably hoped that the deficiency in his own numbers might provoke the Persians to over-commit themselves in a certain area, leaving a gap in their lines. By a lightning quick cavalry thrust from what may have been the best cavalry in the known world at the time, Alexander could cause panic and confusion in the ranks, and once that set in, Persia’s numbers would work against them. Imagine a horrible accident on the interstate that forces people to turn around and redirect their route. In that case, this redirection would be much more easily accomplished with fewer numbers. The large amount of cars, or people in our case at Guagemela, would make for nightmarish confusion.

Here are a couple of depictions of how things went.

It was the gap in the Persians indicated by the map directly above, that gave Alexander the opening he needed. He plunged through and rode right at Darius, who lost his nerve and fled.

I confess that I am cheating a bit with the image above, because most think that this mosaic depicted Darius’s flight at the Battle of Issus two years earlier. But accurate or not, Darius fled the scene in both battles, and this, just as much as Alexander’s cavalry charge, cost the Persians the battle.

Guagemela stands for all time as Alexander’s most impressive victory and crowning achievement. It also may have marked a turning point in his character. Darker elements always latent in him rose to the surface much more often than before. Alexander’s dreadful moral collapse will be the subject of our study next week.

This week we brought an end to the Medieval world by seeing its erosion in the 14th century, mostly through the decimation of the Black Plague, as well as the early hints of nationalism.

The disaster wrought by the Plague went beyond the deaths of millions of people. It also did away with an entire social and moral fabric upon which the medieval world rested.

The virulent and contagious nature of the disease created acute moral dilemmas wherever it struck. Should diseased people be quarantined? Should apparently well people be allowed to flee to other towns? They might have the disease but not yet show the symptoms. The communal spirit that medievals needed to make their society work broke down. Fear and uncertainty meant that no one could trust one another.

Imagine that you know that a couple people in a certain household have the plague. Probably their other family members have it too, but of course you can’t be sure. Should you let the apparently well people out of the house? Some towns took the step of immediately boarding up houses where even one person had the plague, which would condemn all those in the house to death. But towns that took these harsh measures had far fewer deaths overall than those who didn’t. Is this moral? It condemns a few to certain death, but it might save a number of other lives. The plague caused a great deal of tension between those who thought the greatest good lay in the safety of the community, and those who thought the priority should be treatment of the individual.

A number of contemporary chroniclers tell of the debilitating social impact of the disease. Families abandoned even the bodies of their dead for fear of catching the disease, and so many went unburied. Healthy (and usually wealthier) people abandoned towns if they could, and the mutual relationships between nobility and the “commons” eroded. The plague may have had an indirect role in the peasant uprisings, first in France in 1358, and later in England in 1381. Froissart records events in France this way. . .

Thus [the peasants] gathered together without any other counsel, and without any armour saving with staves and knives, and so went to the house of a knight dwelling thereby, and brake up his house and slew the knight and the lady and all his children great and small and brent his house. And they then went to another castle, and took the knight thereof and bound him fast to a stake, and then violated his wife and his daughter before his face and then slew the lady and his daughter and all his other children, and then slew the knight by great torment and burnt and beat down the castle. And so they did to divers other castles and good houses; and they multiplied so that they were a six thousand, and ever as they went forward they increased, for such like as they were fell ever to them, so that every gentleman fled from them and took their wives and children with them, and fled ten or twenty leagues off to be in surety, and left their house void and their goods therein. These mischievous people thus assembled without captain or armour robbed, brent and slew all gentlemen that they could lay hands on, and forced and ravished ladies and damosels, and did such shameful deeds that no human creature ought to think on any such, and he that did most mischief was most praised with them and greatest master. I dare not write the horrible deeds that they did to ladies and damosels; among other they slew a knight and after did put him on a broach and roasted him at the fire in the sight of the lady his wife and his children; and after the lady had been enforced and ravished with a ten or twelve, they made her perforce to eat of her husband and after made her to die an evil death and all her children. They made among them a king, one of Clermont in Beauvoisin: they chose him that was the most ungraciousest of all other and they called him king Jaques Goodman, and so thereby they were called companions of the jaquery. They destroyed and brent in the country of Beauvoisin about Corbie, and Amiens and Montdidier more than threescore good houses and strong castles. In like manner these unhappy people were in Brie and Artois, so that all the ladies, knights and squires of that country were fain to fly away to Meaux in Brie, as well the duchess of Normandy and the duchess of Orleans as divers other ladies and damosels, or else they had been violated and after murdered. Also there were a certain of the same ungracious people between Paris and Noyon and between Paris and Soissons, and all about in the land of Coucy, in the country of Valois, in the bishopric of Laon, Nyon and Soissons. There were brent and destroyed more than a hundred castles and good houses of knights and squires in that country.

The plague also had a catastrophic impact on the Church and its witness. Many priests demonstrated great courage in tending to the sick, and in consequence died in much higher numbers than the average population (I came across one figure that estimates that the plague may have killed 80% of the priests in Europe). This left many towns with no priest at all, while other had priests rushed into office with little to no training. This led to a poorly trained, uneducated clergy and many layman with no religious guidance at all. The Reformation 150 years later had many causes, but surely the gutting of Church leadership from 1350-1450 is one of them.

Desperate people usually seek scapegoats, and the medievals did the same. Many blamed Jews for the plague, and although the Pope declared that anyone “who believed Jews responsible for the disease is deluded by Satan,” people did not listen and Jews were unjustly attacked. A sect called The Flagellants arose, and they claimed to avert the disease through their own personal penance. Their argument seemed to go something like:

The Plague is God’s judgment upon humanity

Once the allotment of God’s wrath is poured out, the Plague will stop

If we ‘absorb’ some of God’s wrath, other people will suffer less

Therefore, we inflict punishment on ourselves to atone for the sins of others.

The Church rightly declared such people heretics. They had a faulty view of God, suffering, humanity, and the disease itself. Froissart comments again,

In the Year of Grace 1349, the penitents went about, coming first out of Germany. They were men who did public penance and scourged themselves with whips of hard knotted leather with little iron spikes. Some made themselves bleed very badly between the shoulders and some foolish women had cloths ready to catch the blood and smear it on their eyes, saying that it was miraculous blood. While they were doing penance, they sang very mournful songs about the nativity and passion of Our Lord.

The object of this penance was to entreat God to put a stop to the mortality, for in that time of death there was an epidemic of plague. People died suddenly and at least a third of all the people in the world died then. The penitents of whom I am speaking went in companies from town to town and from city to city and wore long felt hoods on their heads, each company with its own color. Their rules forbade them to sleep more than one night in each town and the length of their goings-out was fixed by the thirty-three and a half years which Jesus Christ spent on earth, as the Holy Scriptures tell us; each of their companies went about for thirty-three and a half days, and then they returned to the towns or castles from which they had come. They spent very little money on their journeys, because the good people of the towns which they visited asked them to dinner and supper. They slept only on straw, unless illness forced them to do otherwise. When they entered a house in which they were to dine or sup, they kneeled down humbly on the threshold and said three paternosters and three Ave Marias, and did the same when they left. Many reconciliations were achieved through the penitents as they went about, for instance, over killings which had taken place and about which it had so far been impossible to reach an accord; but by means of the penitents peace was made.

Their rules contained some quite reasonable and acceptable things which agreed with such natural human inclinations as to journey about and do penance, but they did not enter the Kingdom of France because Pope Innocent, who was at Avignon at that time with his cardinals, considered the practice and opposed it very strongly, declaring in condemnation of the penitents that public penance inflicted by oneself was neither right nor lawful. They were excommunicated for doing it, and especially those clergy who went with them.

But again, most did not listen, so strongly did fear grip them.

As the Church declined in prestige, the first inklings of nationalism arose. The Church opposed nationalism in the past because they did not want people to think of themselves as primarily English or French, but Christians. One goal of the medieval church was to create a unified Christendom in Europe, a Christendom that if necessary could serve as a “power” bloc to the Moslem world. To achieve this, however, the church had to minimize the role of national hero-kings. But as the war progressed both sides had their national heroes, like Henry V and Joan of Arc, and this led to the rise of an “English” and “French” spirit that helped end to the medieval dream of a unified Christendom.

I think we can point to a few possible reasons for this rise of nationalism, and while we should not confuse it with modern day nationalism, it had some similarities.

As the length of the war increased, the ‘bet’ each side made increased as well. With so much invested, no one wanted to fold. War has a logic of its own, and finds new ways to justify itself, so. . .

Nationalism would be an easy target for the war to find. The kings that began the war died. Neither side could claim the conflict as a holy crusade. If you can’t fight for Edward III, or for the Church, perhaps you could fight “for England.”

Henry V clearly capitalized on this, but so too did the more distinctly Christian Joan of Arc.

By the end of the 100 Years War in 1453 the medieval world had disappeared. Those that survived the plague found their labor in much more demand, forever altering the relationship between peasant and noble. What the Battle of Crecy began the plague finished. Western Europe would seek a new way of understanding themselves and humanity’s place in the world, which we know as the Renaissance. We turn our attention to this period at the end of next week.

This week we looked at the beginning of the 100 Years War (1337-1453), and especially the Battle of Crecy in 1346. The battle, though a major victory for England, did not prove decisive in the long run. However, it is perhaps the most famous battle of the war because it foreshadowed the beginning of the end of chivalry, and with it, the feudal system as a whole.

As we noted a few weeks ago, the Church in particular, and the feudal system in general, tried to limit the possibility of conflict. So, only a certain group of people should fight, and then, fight in a certain way with certain weapons. Riding on horseback with lance and sword required a great deal of training, which in itself restricted who could possibly fight.

This is part of the reason why the Church tried to prevent the widespread use of the crossbow. The simplicity of the design meant that anyone could use this weapon, a kind of medieval version of point and click. And, at close enough range, a powerful crossbow could pierce a knight’s armor. Some suggest that the Church sought only to protect the privileges of the nobility in their attempt to ban the crossbow, but I believe it’s more than that. The crossbow posed a threat to limited warfare, restricted to a narrow class. With a crossbow almost anyone could join the fight.

The English had a tradition of using the longbow. Though simpler in design, longbows had much more power than crossbows, and could be fired more quickly.

Another difference between them, however, is that longbows require much more developed skill than a crossbow. Like riding and swordsmanship, it required time and practice to attain proficiency. Hence, longbowmen, though peasants, became a kind of privileged nobility.

At Crecy the English had longbows, but the French did not, and this proved decisive in the battle. Muddy ground, combined with French disorganization gave the English bowmen plenty of shots at the French forces. The French suffered untold thousands of casualties and had to flee the field. We might be tempted to chalk this up to the ‘fortunes of war, but if we peel back layers, we see that it was no coincidence that the English had longbows and the French did not. Armies that take the field are a byproduct of specific political cultures, and the battle at Crecy was no exception to this.

Longbows posed an even greater threat to the knightly nobility than crossbows, and the longbow could be expected to meet with the resistance of the nobility. It would take a strong central government to allow for the longbows development. The king would need a great deal of authority over local nobility to make this happen.

Since the Norman conquest, England had in fact this tradition of strong kingship, starting with William the Conqueror himself, but also Henry II, Edward I, and Edward III, who many believe started the 100 Years War. These kings created special laws to further ensure the longbow’s use, including

Protecting forests with yew trees

Giving peasants with longbows time off from certain feudal duties to practice their skill

Giving longbow hunters the right to hunt in some normally protected forests

Finally, those who accidentally killed or injured others with the longbow were exempt from legal punishments.

Clearly, the longbow was not just a technological innovation, it was an innovation of a particular political environment. To raise the longbow to the status of the sword meant elevating the status of peasants, or at least some peasants. The longbow was not just a weapon, it foreshadowed a social revolution.

The Church found out that stemming innovation is a fruitless endeavor, but they correctly judged the consequences of the introduction of these weapons. The feudal system could approach fairness if each group in society served legitimate needs of other groups. The nobility had certain privileges, but also difficult military duties that endangered their lives, took them away from home frequently, and so on. But if the peasants did not really need them for protection anymore, what was the reason for the existence of the nobility and their privileges?

Next week we will look at how Crecy may have spurred on peasant revolts in France, and the devastation of the Black Plague.

One of my favorite of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentaries is “The Guru of Go,” about Loyola Marymount University’s run-and-gun style of basketball. Those who follow college basketball today know that scores routinely end up in the 60’s, but LMU routinely scored in the 90’s and had many games of over 100 points or more. Their command over their own style of play “forced” other teams to try and keep up. But . . . even when teams could stick with Loyola Marymount in the short-term, the fact that they got caught up in the fast pace meant that they played on enemy territory. Inevitably, the pace would wear down opponents and Loyola would shoot ahead, leaving their opponents wheezing on the bench.

Most every Christian in the west of an orthodox (small “o”) bent acknowledges that the so-called culture war is over and has been for some time. We lost. This might surprise someone transported from, say, the 1980’s when it appeared that “victory” was at hand, with the ascendancy of the moral majority and political conservatism firmly entrenched. Now looking back we see that marshaling coalitions and votes for laws and Supreme Court justices only meant playing on enemy territory. Rather, the “City of God” cannot arise using the tools of the “City of Man.” Like Loyola’s opponents, we got enticed into playing a game ill suited to us–a secular game on secular turf.

Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age will likely prove too deep and dense for me to glean much from. He writes in a conversational style but with deep concepts and many variations of thought. One needs a great deal of focus to follow him. But I felt, perhaps rashly, that the whole of his thesis made sense when he discussed . . .

medieval carnivals.

Medieval carnivals took some different forms in different times and places. Some days merely involved eating and drinking too much, such as “Fat Tuesday.” Some had more complexity/absurdity, such as the “Lord of Misrule,” which happened around Christmastide. In this space of time a sub-deacon or even a peasant might get appointed as chief of festivities, which obviously involved eating and drinking, among other things. Other such similar days had dukes serve as peasants and peasants occupy manorial houses, and so on. So in the carnival emblem to the side, all of creation seems reversed, as the hare triumphantly rides the hunting hound.

Most commentators point out that such festivals allowed people to let off steam, especially necessary in a structured and hierarchical society such as medieval Europe. Even some contemporary clerics acknowledge this role for the carnival. But this forms only the baseline for understanding the role of the carnival. The emblem of the hare and hounds attest to something grander at work.

Those committed to Christianity know that it provides a means to understand all of experience, not just life after death. Much of our Christian life involves holding things in tension. So we believe that God is one God in three persons, neither favoring the unity or the plurality, but going “straight ahead.” Jesus is fully God and fully man, “without confusion,” as stated by the Council of Chalcedon. The Church hymns the Virgin Mary as the “unwedded bride.” For the Mother of God both terms truly apply, without confusion. Scripture is the Word of God, written by particular men at particular times, and so on it goes. Christians rightly recognized the Incarnation as the focal point of human experience, for in the coming of Christ creation gets remade and reborn, as John attests in his Gospel by obviously referencing Genesis 1. After the Incarnation we live in a new world, but in many ways outwardly it exactly resembles the old world.

In the world B.C.*, people saw childlessness as a curse. Of course children are a blessing in a physical, natural sense, but at a deeper level we were meant to perpetuate the continuing natural order as a means of bringing about the coming of Messiah. No children meant no participation in redemption.

In the kingdom to come, however, we will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Thus, we honor monastics. At the baseline, we honor them for their sacrifice. But their vows of poverty and chastity mean that they do not live in ordinary time. Their lives transcend the ordinary needs of the world with its buying, selling, and saving, and also reflects the reality of the new creation wrought by Christ. They live partially in eternal time, which contains all time. They “neither marry, or are given in marriage,” and of course in the heavenly kingdom no one needs money.** Monastics may or may not live exemplary lives, but the fact of their “station in life” puts them closer to eternal time than laity and even priests, who must concern themselves with affairs in the world.

In his essay Leisure, the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper makes that case that the only way to escape the cycle of work is to receive breaks in time from without. Even vacations, he points out, cannot be “leisure” if we view them strictly as breaks from work. Modern views of labor probably originated with Marx and his followers, and certainly we should sympathize with the “proletariat,” if we wish to use the term. But as Pieper wryly remarks, “Proletarianism cannot obviously be overcome by making everyone proletarian.”

Ordinary time may be strictly linear, but not “eternal time.” Eternal time contains all moments. We the laity, despite our ordinary and natural station, can still at times participate in eternal time. Taking the crucifixion as an example, Taylor writes,

Meanwhile the Church, in its liturgical year, remembers and re-enacts what happened . . . [at Christ’s crucifixion]. Which is why this year’s Good Friday can be closer to the Crucifixion than last year’s mid-summer’s day. And the Crucifixion itself, since Christ’s passion here participates in God’s eternity, is closer to all times than they in secular terms are to each other.

Put in other terms, on this view tracts of secular time were not homogenous and interchangeable. They were [differentiated] by their placing in relation to higher time.

Medieval carnivals did not participate in sacred time, but they did recognize the duality. By breaking down the natural order of ordinary time, they testified to the reality of sacred eternity, where a completely new order will forever take hold of the cosmos. Thus, the breaking down of the order gives it new life, the secular/ordinary order gets reborn freshly after each carnival. It makes perfect sense that the “Lord of Misrule” would “reign” during Christmastide, for this time on calendar celebrated the breaking in of the eternal into temporal via the Incarnation. “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while He is with them (Mk. 2:19)?”

Carnivals did not protest against the prevailing order so much as re-affirm it. Recognizing its temporary and inferior status was the only way it could be reaffirmed, the only way order could perpetuate.

We remember Henry VIII for his many marriages, but it makes perfect sense that an absolutist like Henry would also abolish the days of misrule at Christmastide. This too accompanies his seizure of monastic lands. The monastic vocation and the carnival testify to this tension in time, and to the transitory nature of the state. No statist like Henry likes such things. Other worlds other than the ones they have made frighten and confuse them.

We see too that whatever its intentions, by abolishing liturgies and the church calendar, the Reformation paved the way for secularization. Bit by bit Protestant denominations moved away from the “sacred time” of the church calendar year. Taylor cites Walter Benjamin’s description of “homogenous and empty time” as the mark of modern consciousness. “On this view,” Taylor writes, “time [has no meaning in itself] but is like a container, indifferent to what fills it. Without “eternal liturgics,” and without a sense of time as a gift to mold and shape us, all that is left is for us to fill time with meaning. And so we have, and created the secular state thereby.

This secular victory is quite empty, however. The homogenization of time makes everything sterile. Nothing can have real meaning. Without fasting, our materialistic civilization cannot even feast. With the homogenization of time comes the homogenization of space–including space for worship. With no delineation of either time and space, it’s no wonder that, “we’re all secular now.”

We see this view of the homogeneity and plasticity of time permeate our society. Take Fridays for example. Back in ye olden days Fridays for everyone involved fasting of some kind, for each Friday participated in some way in the Crucifixion–not just in memory, but in reality. After abandoning the dual sense of time described above we instead oriented time around our work/school week. Now Friday has taken on the opposite role in our secular liturgy as a day of release, fun, and celebration. Imagine a family trying to establish something of the older sense of Fridays, and the enormous accompanying societal/liturgical pressure to go out and have fun with friends from work or school facing them square in the face.

“Resistance is futile.”

Of course, this same story has been played out in so many other areas. Without Advent we get Black Friday. Without Paschaltide we get “Spring Breakers.”

In a recent conversation with Hank Hannegraaf Rod Drehrer recounted his meeting with a group of evangelical pastors near the election. While Drehrer understood why one might vote for Trump “in sorrow,” as an alternative to Clinton, he admitted an utter incredulity in seeing some pastors positively enthused about Trump. The response from another evangelical who shared his lament was, “You have to understand, they have no Plan B. Politics is the only way they can conceive of changing the world.”^

The statism of Henry VIII–and others– has born disastrous fruit.

Many on the more secular left might lament Trump’s election and see it as proof that the “war has yet to be won,” or something like that. They can relax and break out the cigars. The war was won long ago, the rest has been mopping-up operations here and there.

I find it hard to tell if Taylor laments or merely describes the shift towards secularism. He does state that at most all those who hope for a return can do is indulge in nostalgia. I agree that the tide ran out long ago, but I have more hope. A proper and effective response will first recognize that turning the battleship will take generations of small faithfulness in our lives and homes. We should begin with a developing a new sense of time.

Dave

Written on the Feast of the Chains of St. Peter, and the Commemoration of St. Paul the Apostle

*The attempt to replace B.C./A.D. with BCE/CE may only be meant as a sop to political correctness or inclusivity. No doubt people mean well. But still, the switch is at root an attempt to remake our understanding of time. Though I lament this shift, it is in many ways long overdue, as we no longer order our lives around the impact of the Incarnation. It took the French just four years of Revolution to switch their calendar. It will take us much longer, because we have nothing to replace it with. We lack the bold audacity of the French, which is a good thing, considering that tens of thousands died in the French Revolution and millions died in the Napoleonic wars.

**Visitors to the monasteries on Mount Athos notice that two different clocks are used in many of the monasteries. One, the familiar ordinary/secular time, the other clocks measure the now nearly extinct “Byzantine” time (Byzantine clock seen bel0w) to reflect this dual reality.

^So too the French Revolutionaries, which explains the failure of their festivals. They sought to ape medieval carnivals, but key differences persisted:

They were attempting to construct a new order, not deconstruct an existing order.

Thus, their festivals had a much more didactic emphasis than medieval carnivals, which